GregN

You know, there's as much debate about what the 'ideal weight' of a person should be... Body fat indexes, and such... There's a multi-million (probably multi-billion) dollar industry developed to promote ideal body weights and the persuit of it. We feed Iris 2 cups of Eukanuba Lamb & Rice in the morning and 2 cups at night. She weighs in at close to 60 pounds. She's 9 1/2 months old. Yup, she's a big girl. BUT... She's also half Alaskan Malamute. Her mom weighed in a 75 pounds, so we expect something a little bit less than that. She get's lots of treats (mostly chicken weiners cut up into really small bits) when we're training. And we throw her the occasional pig ear when we have to crate her if we're going out. You can feel her ribs, and her tummy's firm and flat. She's very active. She runs and plays with her cousin (my in-law's dog) all day, and to the doggy park on the weekends and lots of walks etc. Are we feeding her too much? I don't know. Does she beg for more? You betcha... but she's not really interested in getting more of her regular food -- she would really like to get her mouth on whatever we're eating:) Anyways.... that's just my 2 cents (3 cents Canadian)

Wow... Our puppy class experience was much less "Anne Rand" than your's sounds. We did try to get the dogs to do all the basic commands (ie. sit, stay, down, wait and loose lead walking), if they got it wrong, there was never a 'correction' other than saying "hey" or "ah-ah". One excercise that I remember as typical was the loose lead walking. We had 4 traffic cones set up with a 'treat' on top of each one. The idea was to walk around cones and keep the puppies attention on the handler instead of the cookies. We spent alot of time laughing at the extrodinary efforts that the puppies would go to to 'sneak' the cookies off the cone. I think the big benefit to us was the socialization aspect. I think I would have a talk with the trainer, and bring up your concerns. Also, if this person is the substitute, it could be that they're more used to teaching older dogs and are approaching it in that way... At least you should talk to the instructor, if for no other reason than to reassure yourself.

That would make since -- we're trying to socialize Iris as much as posible. So she's spent alot of time in the doggy park as well as a day or two a week at our local puppy-day care. We actually got a call from Buddy's owner (Buddy's the dog that runs the day care:) ). Apparently Buddy had developed a cough. Well... Kennel Cough is much easier to spell than Bordatella Bronchisptica:) hehehe... but, yeah, that's definately the vaccine we got for her based on the recomendation of her vet. Well, that does make sense. I do understand the difference between bacteria and viruses, and the only hope for a virus is a vaccination or nurse-type medicine -- let the virus run it's course and the body fight it off. The good news is that there really wasn't any discharge that we noticed (other than the normal eye-boogers that we all get in the morning), and it appears that our baby is winning the battle. I don't know about anybody else but I found all the responses interesting, and read everything:) It's good to have a virtual reassuring hand... Yup:) She seems to be doing fine. Her sneezing has greatly reduced -- only a couple of times yesterday... I managed to spend the entire day with her yesterday 'cause I was home with my own cold to fight with:) hehehe... Once again, thanks to everybody for the info. If she takes a turn back, or we start to develope any colour in the mucus, it's off to the vet we go!! Thanks again!!

Thanks for the info. It would not surprise me that she (Iris) has picked up a cold. We got a call last night from the doggy-day care that we sometimes take her to. Thier dog is ill (coughing and such) and she was just checking on us. So far, Iris' illness has been limited to sneezing. This will be the 4th day that we've noticed it. Her appetite seems to be the same (she's never been one to eat alot, unless her food is in danger of being eaten by another dog) and her activity level is about the same. I'm pretty sure that this isn't "Kennel Cough" since we had her vaccinated against that. We'll keep our eye on her. Once again, thanks for the info, folks!!

Greetings all... I just have a quick question for our expert panel here... Can dogs catch colds? The reason I ask is that in the past couple days, Iris has been doing alot of sneezing and snuffling. It's allmost as though she's got a stuffed up nose. I was wondering if it might be possible for her to have caught a cold...? Thanks for any info.

Now that makes sense to me. I have noticed that our dog get's bored of the treats after about a half hour. I'll try the radical direction shifting, I think that might actually work. I had somebody suggest to me to get a gentle leader, but I'm not so sure I want to go that route. I mean, she's not what I would call a chronic puller -- it's just that she get's distracted easily.

Thanks for all the advice! I'm glad that I know my Iris better than the PetSmart trainer (with her JRT) hehehe... I agree that the petting and 'good girl' should be the rewards. The problem we have been noticing with the food reward is... well... I think Iris is a bit funny with her food. She doesn't like to eat it out of her bowl. She will take a mouthful of food out of her bowl, and take it the other side of the kitchen (or to the living room) and drop it on the floor and eat it there. Soooooo... when we reward her with a treat, she has to take it elsewhere to eat it. When we're walking with her, that means that she when we give her a treat for good walking she wants to run off with it to eat it. And that's definately not good walking. It's a bit of a catch 22 we got going:) Oh well... it's the quirks that we all possess that make us interesting... and our pets are no different:)

Absolutely! The trainer told us to cut the treats up into little bits, mix them all up in a fanny pouch and dump in a bunch of kibble. That way, a good chunk of the 'treats' is actually kibble that has picked up the scent of the treats. I thought it was good advice. Unfortunately, Iris would spit out the kibble. Go figure. We've only done the one course -- the PetSmart puppy kindergarden. But in that course, every time she did good, she got a treat. Iris is pretty good at everything we've taught her so far with the exception of walking -- she really wants to pull on the leash. So far, we haven't found a treat that she is willing to fixate on more than pulling on the leash. I think it depends on the treats. We tried some treats that didn't agree with Iris, and we haven't used them since. As I mentioned above, you can mix the kibble in with the treats so that the kibble picks up the smell of the treats. It didn't work for us, though.

I have a question... We were told that we should reward good behaviour with food (usually a treat like a cut up snaussage ) and mark bad behaviour with a sharp "HEY!". Now, we were sitting outside on our patio the a while ago, and Iris went into the garden. I gave her a "hey" and then called her, she came running over and got a treat and praise for comming. Then, a couple minutes later, she makes her way into the garden again. Again, I give her the "hey" and then call her over and reward her for comming with a treat and praise. Then, I started to watch her more closely. Right after she got the treat, she ran back to the garden, took one step into it and looked directly at me as if to say "well? are you gonna give me a treat now?" I thought that she had now associated going into the garden with getting a treat. I told it to the trainer that we go to and she said that it was good that we were stopping her before she got into trouble, and no, our dog was still just a dog and was not trying to get treats by going into the garden. She said that everbody thinks thier puppy is gifted and such (which I can understand). Is this the case? Can you use the standard dog training techniques to teach a BC? Or should you approach the dog as if you were approaching a 5 year old -- ie. assume that they will understand, and that you can "reason" with them (ie. show them what you want, then assume that they will do it once they understand). Any thoughts/commnents on this?

We put Iris through the 'Puppy Basics" class at Pet Smart. We started her at 16 weeks, though, and they said that it was just the right age. One thing, though, is that they would not let us start until she had her rabies shot. Also, the recommended getting a kennel cough shot, too. As for how good the training program was... There were a couple of things I liked about it and some I didn't like. One thing I liked was that it gave Iris lots of exposure to different experiences. Also, the person running the training program was great -- she really loved puppies (and dogs in general). What I didn't like was that even though the course only cost $99.00, we ended up spending $160.00 during the course. They run the coureses inside the store, so naturally, we couldn't leave without buying something -- new toy, more reward treats, whatever. The goal of the course was to teach our puppy some manners. I think that she knows how she is supposed to behave, but her being 6 1/2 months old now, she's got this whole attitude that she doesn't need to do anything that we tell her unless we've got a treat for her. That being said, we're not continuing on with the dog training at PetSmart. We've got her enrolled in Grade 1 at a local trainer that came highly recommended from some friends of mine (also, we saw them at our local SPCA's majour fund raising even). So, to answer the question about starting your dog at PetSmart early, my own experience is that they didn't care how old the puppy was, as long as it had the rabbies vaccine.